The UK’s Telegraph (5/6, Beckford) reported that as “many as 20,000 British women could avoid developing” breast cancer “each year, if they took more exercise, drank less and ate better.” Latest figures “suggest that 47,600 women developed breast cancer in 2008,” and the World Cancer Research Fund estimates that estimates that “42 per cent of these cases…would be preventable if women developed healthier lifestyles.” The WCRF’s “10 Recommendations for Cancer Prevention include being ‘as lean as possible without becoming underweight’; keeping fit; limiting consumption of fatty, salty and sugary food and drink; eating fruit, vegetables and pulses; eating less red meat and processed meat; drinking less and choosing a balanced diet rather than vitamin supplements.”

Of course it’s wise from a general medical perspective – think in terms of heart disease, osteoarthritis, type 2 diabetes and other ailments prevalent in our too-developed world – to be slender instead of fat, exercise regularly and eat a balanced diet.

I’m tired of the press trumpeting poorly-done trials that feed into a stereotypic conception of how women should behave. Yes, diet and stress could play a role in any hormone-driven disease, but so do a lot of things. As for alcohol, maybe consumption is a surrogate for wealth and living in a place like the U.S. where people drink freely, where breast cancer rates are unseemly.

We should be sure of the facts before pronouncing these fatal flaws in our ways of existence and being. Plenty of women feel badly about their tumors and disfigurement without this added layer of insult.